Retrieving The Big Society

Retrieving the Big Society presents a collection of essays that challenge the view of Britain’s Big Society as a political gimmick and recognise it as an alternative to the central state in social and economic governance.

Offers an original and critical take on the idea of the Big Society

Attempts to make sense of the Big Society by placing in the context of the history of localism, mutualism, and voluntarism

Features contributions by experts on British politics and political theory

Jason Edwards is Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. Dr. Edwards is also Director of the B.A. Programme in Politics and Government, Co-Director of Birkbeck Centre for the Study of British Politics and Public Life, and has written widely on the history of political thought, contemporary political theory, and British politics.

“It is well worth a read.” (The Journal of
Social Policy, 1 October 2013)

One of the problems associated with the introduction of the idea
of ‘Big Society’ was its perceived lack of ideological
underpinning. In many ways, this book of essays seeks to redress
and explain this omission. But it is more than this. Many of the
contributions are seeking to make sense of what might be described
as ‘new conservatism’, sometimes called
‘Cameronism’, placing it in its ideological, social and
cultural context. It is, therefore, an excellent addition to the
debate about the coherence of modern conservatism.
—Neil McNaughton, Principal Examiner, A Level
Government and Politics. Former editor, Talking Politics.

When I first heard of this book, I must confess my initial
thought was that it was appearing a touch too late. Along with so
many people, not least on the Tory right-wing, I was surprised when
the 2010 Conservative manifesto embodied the Big Society concept at
its heart. Since then, the Big Society’s own heartbeat has
been almost undetectable. His launch of the idea at my own
university, 11th July, supported by Phil Redmond, has not seen it
acclaimed by his own party or anyone much else. Has it all been a
waste of time? Even this book’s editor admits in his
introduction that ‘for some it is already looking like a
decidedly exhausted project’.

Having read a fair bit of the book my feeling is that Cameron
was prescient in first launching such a radical idea in his 2009
Hugo Young lecture but then premature, if not a little foolhardy,
in building his manifesto around it. His party, after all, is
called the Conservatives and its difficulties in digesting
this call for more participation and voluntary activism is kind of
understandable. Some people in the Labour Party, by the same token,
were a tad peeved that items of what they have regarded as their
own distinctive clothing had been stolen. In his contribution
Rodney Barker points out that ‘Pluralism in one form or
another-trade unionism, guild socialism, municipal socialism,
workers control- is part of the left’s democratic
heritage.’ But he goes on to add that:

‘Pluralism is not a monopoly of the left, and because it
is so rich and diverse, it is always necessary before anything else
to ask exactly what kind of pluralism is being proposed….The
word pluralism is a numerator, not a denominator; it tells us there
are many different collections of people but not what kind of
collections they are…. Burke’s ‘little
platoon’… is a capacious and empty term, which can
cover a fox hunt or hedge fund just as easily as it can cover a
parent’s group or an allotment
association.’

Edwards insists that the aim of the Big Society is not so much
to achieve a future ideal as to retrieval of something
valuable – ‘a world where strong local politics,
voluntary public service and mutual and cooperative civic
associations were at the heart of Britain’s social and
economic life’- which has been lost. Now that sounds
more like Edmund Burke, the Conservative thinker about whom Jesse
Norman MP has recently written a much praised biography.

Norman offers up his explanation of the concept at the start of
the book in a discussion with Maurice Glasman, the progenitor of
the Blue Labour school of thought. Norman evokes
Hobbes’ idea of a social contract. According to this citizens
live in an anarchic world in which for protection they have to
accept an autocratic state Leviathan. Norman observes
that Hobbes seems to ignore the role played by institutions in
society and the fact that human nature is more resourceful than
merely avoiding death.

‘The Big Society is about empowering free and independent
institutions that lie between the individual and the state and is
about empowering individuals on the basis of a rich conception of
human nature.’

Glasman adduces his own concept of the ‘good
society’, arguing that while the BS sought to ‘bring
things back to the internal goods of practices and institutions of
goodness, of knowledge, of skill, of excellence of good
practice’ it cannot ‘conceptually as well as
politically, confront money, power and capitalism as forms of
exploitation.’

I was especially taken with the well written piece by Richard
Kelly and Robert Crowcroft, on Multiculturalism. It seems to use BS
almost as an ostensible reason to argue that the Conservative Party
should row back vigorously from Cameron’s ill-advised
repudiation of multiculturalism in his February 2011 Munich speech.
Living and working in Manchester, it is not surprising that Kelly
should feel that a disconnect between the Tory party and ethnic
minorities is a mistake.

Both authors, in an acute analysis of Burke’s thinking
– they see him as a maverick rather than an orthodox thinker
– maintain that the ‘Father of Conservatism’
would have seen the ‘liberal integration project’ as
one which crudely ignored the ‘organic’ nature of
ethnic communities and sought to impose on them in a way which has
bred disaffection. They see political sense in reaching out to such
ethnic minority groups, where ‘the Tory values enshrined in
many Black and Minority Ethnic communities could be valuable to a
Conservative leader seeking public support.’ [My own view of
Cameron’s volte face was that, alarmed by the UKIP threat, he
was seeking to curry favour with his fractious, often unmanageable
right-wing.]

I lack the space and time to comment in depth on the many
other excellent chapters in this book but I think they succeed in
proving that the Big Society has opened up a new flank in public
discussion. It is far from being, in Edwards’ words
‘bombast or window dressing for the coalition’s deficit
reduction programme.’ The Coalition’s initial pursuit
of Big Society policy has been desultory, almost pathetic, but when
nothing short of a renaissance is required in public attitudes
towards democratic government, this volume shows that it has
contributed towards a reframing of language of politics and the
content of a beneficial public discussion.
—Bill Jones, Professor of Politics, University of Liverpool
Hope

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